A Jury Of Her Peers By Susan Glaspell

“A Jury of Her Peers” is refers to the people who are judging Minnie Wright for her crime.  In the story, Mrs. Hale and the sheriff’s wife, Mrs. Peters, are the peers whom the author is referring to and who are judging Minnie Wright.  These women know Mrs. Wright and their views of her are altered by the fact that she is their neighbor and also a woman.  The women feel sorry for Mrs. Wright because her husband was emotionally abusive to her.  They do not pay attention to the fact that she did indeed kill someone.  If Susan Glaspell had really wanted women to be treated just like men, she would have written the story so that Minnie Wright had a normal trial.  Minnie Wright should have gotten a trial with a jury consisting of people who did not know her or anything about her past.

Wright's life in their hands to do with what they will.  Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale find the evidence needed to convict Minnie Wright and they suppress it.  They were women who understood the plight of loneliness and the death of a beloved pet.  Mrs. Hale understood that Mr. Wright was a hard man to live with and she knew that he had not only killed Mrs. Wright's bird but he had also killed the real Minnie Foster, the girl she had been.  The men in the story, Sheriff Peters, Mr. Hale, and the young unmarried County Attorney, see only surface things.  They believe that the motive for John's murder lies in the bedroom or in the barn.  The men flounder around ignorantly searching for something they will never find because they can not think as Minnie Wright did.  If the women had told them about the discovery of the dead bird, they would probably laugh and say that the women needed to go back to their quilting and their jellies.  The ragged and uneven sewing that suggests a misplaced state of mind in Minnie Wright would also have been laughed at.  The men wanted to find something concrete that would easily convince an all male jury but they never would.  To men, dead canaries are dead canaries, they would never read into it what Mrs. Hale, Mrs. Peters, and Mrs. Wright did.

Although “A Jury of Her Peers” and “Trifles” are similar in plot, Mustazza’s article, “Generic Translation and Thematic Shift in Susan Glaspell’s ‘Trifles’ and ‘A Jury of Her Peers’” highlights the differences and similarities between the two. Mustazza’s article may help aid readers to understand the differences between Glaspell’s two works and provide understanding as to why Glaspell may have changed the genre and form of the plot. “Trifles” is a dramatic play whereas “A Jury of Her Peers” is prose fiction. While some differences may be seen on the surface, other differences will need to be inspected closely. Mustazza’s article may help one to understand Glaspell’s works by providing analysis and additional perspectives on both “A Jury of her Peers” and “Trifles”.

In Susan Glaspell’s, “A Jury of her Peers”, it is the women who take center stage and captivate the reader’s emotions. Throughout the feministic short story, which was written in 1917, several repeating patterns and symbols help the audience to gain a deeper understanding of the difficulty of prairie life for women and of the bond that women share. The incredible cunning the women in the story demonstrate provides insight into the innate independence that women had even during days of deep sexual discrimination. In “A Jury of her Peers”, the hardships women of the early twentieth century must endure and the sisterhood that they can still manage to maintain are manifested as a mysterious, small-town murder unfolds.

"A Jury of Her Peers" opens with debate encompassing Minnie Foster Wright, who is in prison on suspicion that she killed her spouse by strangling him. Mrs. Wright's story is told by implication through a discussion between Martha Hale, whose spouse uncovered the grouping of John Wright, Mrs. Diminishes, the wife of the neighborhood sheriff. The sheriff asks Mrs. Robust to go with them to the Wright's house so she can stay with his wife while the men explore the homicide scene. Put together by condition, the ladies structure a prompt bond as they start assembling some of Minnie's possessions to accumulate to her prison cell. Presuming that there is nothing in the kitchen aside from "kitchen things," the men start their examination in the upstairs of the house and in an outside animal dwelling place. Left alone in Minnie's kitchen, in any case, the two ladies start uncovering their pieces of information about Minnie's conceivable intention in executing her spouse. Step by step, Mrs. Sound and Mrs. Diminishes start perceiving insights about Minnie's life that escape the notice of their spouses. They perceive Minnie's forsaken, separated presence, her broken furniture, the once-over kitchen where she needed to cook, and the battered clothes she was compelled to

In the short story "A Jury of Her Peers" a woman named Minnie Wright is accused of the murder of her husband. Minnie Wright is a farmer's wife and is also isolated from the out side world. There is an investigation that takes place in the home of the murder. There are three men that are involved on the case and two women accompany, but are not there to really help solve the murder. These two women will

Susan Glaspell’s one-act play covers issues regarding female oppression and patriarchal domination. The play still exists as a fascinating hybrid of murder mystery and social commentary on the oppression of women. When Margaret Hossack was charged with the murder of her sixty year old husband John, the man she had been married to for thirty three years. Killed by two blows to his head with an ax, John Hossack was thought to be a cold mannered and difficult man to be married to, but he didn’t deserve his

Andrea Dworkin, a prominent radical feminist, tries to explain why women fail to put themselves out from where they are: “Women have been taught that, for us, the earth is flat, and that if we venture out, we will fall off the edge.” Women are often conditioned by different factors in their life to stay in their position, especially from societal norms and expectations of them from the men in their lives. However, over time, this could be emotionally and mentally burdensome to a woman’s state of mind, leading them to nowhere. This theme of oppression is prevalent in the feminist short stories titled “A Jury of her Peers”, written by Susan Glaspell, and “Sweat”, written by Zora Neale Hurston. In these works, Glaspell and Hurston elaborate on how powerful female protagonists are able to decide for themselves, but explain their mentally-taxing processes and reasons in accomplishing such a feat. In these short stories, women are able to rise over oppression, but primarily to overcome a grief or insecurity that stems from within and after being pushed to their limits and accustomed to their roles by men.

In “A Jury of Her Peers,” Glaspell utilizes the sexist standards in society to demonstrate the harmful effects. Men in the story are presented as being the leader of the relationship and having the role of dealing with important business, while women are shown to be domestic caretakers who

Critically analyzing stories based on the elements of fiction can give readers a more in-depth perspective on the authors true meaning to what is written. In Susan Glaspell's "A Jury of Her Peers", irony, theme, and plot and structure are applied well throughout. When analyzing this story, it can not be judged on how appealing or entertaining it is, but whether or not it fully achieves its central purpose and how significant that purpose is. In this story every element mentioned has worked together to bring this tale to life.

In “A Jury of Her Peers,” Susan Glaspell uses the men’s belittlement and the women’s responses to show their differences. For example, when the men laugh about the women’s question of the quilt, Mrs. Hale responds with “our taking up our time with little things while we’re waiting for them to get the evidence. I don’t see as it’s anything to laugh about” (Glaspell 8). Seeing these differences bring the two women, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters, closer together. At one point in the story, “the two women moved a little closer together” in response when the men trivialize what trifles women go through (Glaspell 5). The women see things in the house that the men cannot due to the men never having to experience being in the place of a housewife. The men failed to see the little details that women could see. “Belittling the women, the condescending men exclude them from the legal investigation, doubting the women could recognize a forensic clue”, the men doing this causes their view of the crime to be incomplete, and they fail to recognize that the women were the men’s greatest investigators of this case (Kamir). Mr. Hale even completely ridicules the intelligence of the women altogether by saying “But would the women know a clue if they did come upon it?” (Glaspell 6).

“A Jury of Her Peers” is a short story written by Susan Glaspell in 1917 illustrates early feminist literature. The two female characters, Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale, is able to solve the mystery of who the murderer of John Wright while their male counterparts could not. This short story had been adapted from Glaspell’s one-act play Trifles written the previous year. The play consists of the same characters and plotline as the story. In both works, Glaspell depicts how the men, Sheriff Peters and Mr. Hale, disregard the most important area in the house, the kitchen, when it comes to their investigation. In the end, the women are the ones who find clues that lead to the conclusion of Minnie Wright, John Wright’s wife, is the one who murdered him. Both of Glaspell’s female characters illustrate the ability to step into a male dominated profession by taking on the role of detective. According to Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide, written by Lois Tyson, a reader-response critique “focuses on readers’ response to literary texts” and it’s a diverse area (169). Through a reader-response criticism from a feminist lens, we are able to analyze how “A Jury of Her Peers” and Trifles depict how a patriarchal society oppresses women in the early twentieth century, gender stereotypes confined both men and women and the emergence of the New Woman is illustrated.

In a world where showing a bit too much shoulder was forbidden, came Susan Glaspell. Glaspell was an American playwright, born in the cruel times of oppression. This influenced women’s opinions on certain subjects which caused them to be silenced by fear of rejection from society. “A Jury of Her Peers” was based on an era where women felt as though it was unreasonable to speak up if they felt it was not absolutely dire. Harboring these pent up feelings could cause a person to act antagonistic. Minnie Wright was an example of this. She killed her husband and was subjected to the judgement of her peers. As the group investigated Mr. Wright’s death, there were two stories unraveling. The in depth explanation that the women figured out and the simplistic version the men had seemed to pick up (Glaspell). People would benefit from reading this story to begin to understand the struggle of what this and other women had gone through. Penn Manor American Literature students would benefit from having Susan Glaspell’s story “A Jury of Her Peers” in their curriculum because of how she expressed feminism through her writing at a time when it was new and discouraged; her ability to emphasize the themes with her settings and characters; and her literature that follows a protagonist that navigates through a sexist world.

In “A Jury of Her Peers” by Susan Glaspell, Minnie Foster Wright is the main character, even though the reader never sees Mrs. Wright. The story begins as Mrs. Hale joins the county attorney, Mr. Henderson; the sheriff, Mr. Peters; Mrs. Peters; and her husband in a “big two-seated buggy” (188). The team men are headed the Wright house to investigate Mr. Wright’s murder. Mrs. Peters is going along to gather some belongings for Mrs. Wright, who is currently being held in jail, and Mrs. Hale has been asked to accompany Mrs. Peters. As the investigation is conducted throughout the story, the reader is given a sense of how women were treated during this time and insight into why the women ultimately keep evidence from the men.

In Trifles, Susan Glaspell debates the roles between men and women during a period where a debate was not widely conducted. Glaspell wrote Trifles in the early 1900s—a time when feminism was just getting started. In this play, Glaspell shows us her perspective on the roles of men and women and how she believes the situation would play out. Trifles seems like another murder mystery on the surface, but the play has a much more profound meaning behind it. Glaspell presents the idea that men and women analyze situations differently, and how these situations are resolved based on how we interpret them. Research shows that women’s brains “may be optimized for combining analytical and intuitive thinking.” On the other hand, male brains are predominately “optimized for motor skills and actions” (Lewis). In the play, this research shows true when the women, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters, analyze details rather than looking at the apparent, physical evidence, and they find out the motive of the murder. The men, on the other hand, look at broader evidence that does not lead to any substantial conclusion. When Glaspell was writing this play, she wanted the women to be the real instigators, the ones that would end up solving the mystery. While the men in the story laugh at the ‘trifles’ that women worry about, these details mean a great deal in Glaspell’s eyes. Glaspell presents the idea what men and women are different in the way they live their lives through detail.